In 2025, the Chief Financial Officer role has emerged as one of the most strategically influential positions in executive leadership. There has been a clear rise in female representation, with women holding 17.4% CFO roles in Fortune 500 companies as of 2025, compared to less than 12% just a decade ago. 

Surveys show that over 72% of CFOs now play a direct role in shaping enterprise-wide strategy, while 67% oversee transformation or major change programmes. This places finance leadership at the centre of growth and value creation. Within this context, a growing cohort of women CFOs is contributing to long-term capital allocation decisions, investment prioritisation and performance management at scale, reinforcing the expanding influence of diverse financial leadership at the top of global business.

Amy Hood – EVP & CFO, Microsoft

Under Amy Hood’s financial leadership, Microsoft has delivered some of its key strategic shifts and transformation. Hood joined the company in 2002 and stepped into the role of Executive Vice President and CFO in 2013. In her tenure, Hood has been pivotal to the organisation’s shift to cloud computing, the incorporation of AI across its range of products and a move towards subscription based services from Microsoft’s traditional software sales model. 

These strategic shifts were underpinned by disciplined capital allocation, rigorous cost management, and a finance organisation deeply embedded in operational and strategic decision-making across the company.

Hood played a central role in shaping the financial framework that enabled Microsoft Azure to scale rapidly into a core growth engine, while also supporting broader technological transitions, including the current era of AI. In fiscal year 2025, Microsoft reported revenues of approximately $281.7 billion, with Microsoft Cloud contributing more than $110 billion and Azure delivering year-on-year growth exceeding 39%. This sustained performance helped lift Microsoft’s market capitalisation beyond $3 trillion, reinforcing investor confidence in the company’s cloud and AI-led strategy.

Her influence is equally evident in Microsoft’s most significant acquisitions, including LinkedIn, GitHub, and Activision Blizzard, where Hood applied rigorous financial scrutiny while maintaining a long-term strategic lens. 

Susan Li – CFO, Meta Platforms

Appointed as the CFO of Meta in 2022 at the age of 36, Susan Li is among the youngest finance chiefs at one of the largest global corporations. She brings nearly two decades of institutional experience, having joined Facebook in 2008. Before joining Facebook, she also worked at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst. In her career, Li progressed through senior roles overseeing business planning, treasury and long-term financial management.

Today, she sits at the centre of Meta’s strategic pivot towards artificial intelligence. For 2025, the company lifted full-year capital expenditure guidance to $70 billion – $72 billion, with the majority directed towards data centres, servers and AI infrastructure. This level of investment places Meta among the most capital-intensive companies in the technology sector. Company estimates have indicated even higher numbers for 2026, suggesting the possibility of surpassing $100 billion in this year. 

Li’s leadership reflects a recalibration of financial stewardship. Rather than focusing solely on cost containment, she converts large-scale uncertainty into structured investment decisions, aligning balance-sheet capacity with a long-term strategy of growth.

Colette Kress – EVP & CFO, NVIDIA

Since joining Nvidia in 2013, Colette Kress has overseen the company’s transition into a critical supplier of computing power for artificial intelligence. With more than 25 years of experience across senior finance roles, she brings operational discipline to the business that is currently surpassing its own demand projections. In a recent investor event, Kress announced that the demand has only grown since its $500 billion forecast. 

Kress has guided Nvidia through large-scale production expansion linked to AI products such as its Blackwell GPUs, managing supply-chain exposure, pricing power and capital deployment as demand accelerated. The financial outcomes have been striking. For fiscal 2025, Nvidia reported record revenue of $130.5 billion, more than double the $60.9 billion generated the previous year. During her tenure, Nvidia became the first company to reach a market capitalisation of $5 trillion in October 2025.

Her leadership reflects a broader shift in how finance chiefs approach growth, with strategic expansion treated as a core responsibility rather than a by-product of operational success.

Sinead Gorman – CFO, Shell

Sinead Gorman’s appointment as CFO of Shell in April 2022 placed a long-serving executive at the helm of one of the world’s most capital-intensive businesses. Having joined Shell in 1999, she built deep experience across trading, mergers and acquisitions, treasury, and upstream finance before assuming the group’s top finance role.

In the first quarter of 2025, Shell reported adjusted earnings of $5.6 billion, up 52% quarter on quarter, and generated $11.9 billion in operating cash flow excluding working capital. These results highlighted the resilience of the company’s financial framework amid volatile energy markets.

Gorman has been central to Shell’s strategic repositioning, including divestments in Singapore and Nigeria and targeted acquisitions to strengthen integrated gas and LNG optimisation. With an engineering background and advanced finance credentials from the University of Oxford and London Business School, she aligns capital allocation with energy transition objectives while protecting shareholder returns.

Anat Ashkenazi – SVP & CFO, Alphabet

Anat Ashkenazi became CFO of Alphabet and Google in July 2024 following a 23-year career in the pharmaceutical sector, where she supported sustained growth driven by major product launches. She joined Alphabet at a moment when investment discipline and speed of execution were becoming critical priorities.

In the first quarter of 2025, Google reported revenue of $90.23 billion, exceeding expectations, while Ashkenazi led a renewed focus on cost efficiency and organisational simplification. Alphabet’s planned $75 billion capital expenditure in 2025, which was later raised to $90 billion, was largely directed towards AI and cloud infrastructure. This reflects a disciplined commitment to long-term value creation.

Her role illustrates the CFO’s expanding mandate, balancing productivity, revenue delivery and multi-billion-dollar investment decisions within a fast-moving technology landscape.

Conclusion 

The growing presence of women in the CFO seat reflects a deeper shift in how financial leadership is valued. Companies led by diverse executive teams consistently demonstrate stronger capital discipline, more resilient balance sheets and clearer long-term investment priorities. The leaders profiled here show that the modern CFO is no longer defined by caution alone, but by the ability to combine analytical rigour with strategic judgement. As global businesses navigate technological disruption and capital-intensive growth, women CFOs are increasingly shaping not just financial outcomes, but the direction and durability of corporate strategy itself.